


Out Like a Light

by dynazty



Series: The Not So Secret History [2]
Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: (kind of), Canon Compliant, M/M, Post-Canon, and sad, basically just adult flangst, domestic banter, francis is drunk, late night philosophy, pajama pants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22769230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynazty/pseuds/dynazty
Summary: “Everything seems more dramatic when you’re sad, doesn’t it?”
Relationships: Francis Abernathy/Richard Papen
Series: The Not So Secret History [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1637038
Comments: 4
Kudos: 110





	Out Like a Light

**Author's Note:**

> the second installment in my "not so secret history" series, following [ "live for now"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21703396), but this can be read completely as a stand alone.
> 
> much thanks to grammarly for having my back at 1 am when my pesky writing impulses kick in; i wrote this directly after a lengthy crying sesh in my bed very late at night, so do forgive me if nothing is coherent! 
> 
> title is from the song "out like a light" by the honeysticks. please enjoy :)

_**"One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy."**_

****

****

**_\- Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics_**

____

“Everything seems more dramatic when you’re sad, doesn’t it?”

I looked up from the paperback book that was resting on my thighs. 

Francis was standing in the doorway, backlit by the sharp hallway light spilling into our quaint hotel room. In one hand was the room’s plastic keycard, and in the other was a wrinkled paper bag poorly concealing a (most likely empty) bottle of vodka. 

“Welcome home,” I spoke quietly, albeit sarcastically. 

Francis grunted without manner, then stepped over the threshold. The heavy hotel door swung closed behind him and shut with a thump; as he moved into the dim light of the bedside lamp, I could see his tie hanging undone around his neck. He wasn’t wearing shoes. 

The mattress beneath me dipped as he slumped down on the end of the bed and let the paper bag fall to the floor. It made no sound against the faux Persian carpet, only crinkling slightly when he kicked it away. He then began to shuck off his coat, socks, and tie, leaving him in his plain, wrinkled grey shirt and slacks. 

I turned my book face down in my lap, mentally preparing myself in case he was having one of his fits. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Francis said without looking at me. “Everything.”

“You’re drunk,” I observed.

“I think I’m always drunk.”

“Come here,” I said, patting the duvet next to me as an invitation. “Sit.”

He looked over his shoulder so I could only see his profile. He had a very pointy nose. “Why?”

“It’ll make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to feel better.” He scooted back across the bed anyways, coming to sag against the white pillows and closing his eyes.

“Because you don’t deserve to feel better?” I took a guess.

He rolled onto his side to face me and blinked lethargically. “Precisely.”

His face was red and puffy, and his lips were a dusty shade of purple; the icy Canadian weather had caught up to him. His glasses were skewed and cloudy, digging into the bridge of his nose. 

I reached over and slid them off for him, then turned and placed them gingerly on the nightstand. 

“You’re cold,” I noted. “And you reek.”

“Don’t flatter me,” he mumbled into the pillow. Then, his head tilted up slightly. “What’re you reading?”

“Nothing,” I said, gaze dropping to the book in my lap. “Pulp fiction.”

He made a noise of disgust. “I hate cowboys.”

“Not all pulp fiction has cowboys in it,” I said, dog-earing the page I was flipped to then dangling it in front of Francis’s eyes. “Not to mention it’s all we can afford right now.”

“Does that one have cowboys in it?” He took it and scanned the grainy, yellowed cover. 

“It does.”

“So, I hate it.” He cast it aside. “You really couldn’t find anything better?”

“You try finding a good book at a gas station for less than three dollars,” I retorted. 

He hummed softly. “It’s strange being poor.”

“Yeah,” I said, looking back at him. “It is.” 

I didn’t bother adding that my whole life had been strange.

“We’re getting off-topic,” Francis pointed out, hauling himself onto his elbow.

“From what? Your drunkenness?”

He shook his head. “My _sad_ drunkenness.”

“Ah,” I said. 

“Aren’t you going to comfort me?” His hair was tangled in front of his eyes, strands of red criss crossing his forehead like highways criss-cross a roadmap. “A good boyfriend would comfort me.”

“Good thing I’m not your boyfriend,” I replied.

He huffed breathily, then rolled onto his back once more. 

I raised my eyebrows. “I thought you didn’t want to feel better.”

He shrugged. “I lied. But you can’t want what you don’t deserve.”

“Yes, you can.” I turned to look at him; his arm was bent over his eyes, obscuring half his face.

“Not when you’re poor.”

“Francis,” I placed my hand on his forearm and tugged it away from his eyes so I could meet them. “You can want anything. Nothing’s going to stop you.”

“Not even money?”

“Not even money.”

He hummed again, then curved away so his back was facing me. 

“You’re tired?” I asked. 

He answered with a yawn and a muffled “Mhm.”

I pried my eyes away from the slope where his shoulders met his neck. “You should sleep.”

“Don’t want to,” was his reply.

“You need to.”

Instead of biting back, he curled deeper into himself and grunted. 

I rolled my eyes, not in the mood to deal with his brattiness, and pushed myself off of the mattress. I strode over to his suitcase, feet sinking into the faux rug, and crouched down where it lay open underneath the single window of the hotel room. Pushing aside his neatly stacked collection of turtlenecks, I found the one plain t-shirt he owned crumpled at the bottom. Next to it were his pair of discount flannel pajama pants, decorated with little gold Jewish stars and dreidels. 

(I had a matching pair of Kwanza ones -- we’d forgotten our pajamas when we’d fled Massachusetts the night of Francis’s wedding, and every drugstore and gas station we had stopped at to buy new ones had been sold out of anything sensible.)

“Here,” I tossed them at Francis’s figure. “Put these on.” 

“I don’t want to,” he sat up and frowned at the pants now splayed in his lap. 

“But you want to risk falling asleep in your pants?”

“I’m not going to sleep!” 

“Francis.” I shot him a motherly glare. 

A moment later, he sighed. “Fine.” 

I crept back under the covers of the queen-sized bed while Francis tugged his slacks off and replaced them with the flannel pajamas. I closed my eyes and politely averted my gaze. 

It was quiet for a few seconds, then I felt the sheets being lifted; his warm body slid in next to me. 

“You can open your eyes now.” 

When I did, I was met with his lazy stare. He was propped up on his elbow again. His bare forearms were pale and dotted with little brown spots of melanin.

“You’re really not going to ask why I’m sad?” He spoke softly, tracing circles into the bedsheets with his forefinger. 

Instead of looking at him, I watched his finger. “Do you want me to?” 

“I do.” 

“Okay,” I said. “Why are you sad?”

His lips parted for a brief moment, then closed again. His finger stopped tracing. He was silent, unmoving; the gears in his head were churning, slow but determined. 

Then, “Because I haven’t known you my whole life.”

Without warning, the room felt smaller. 

“That’s not something you should be sad about, Francis,” I said, trying to ignore the heat I could feel writhing up the back of my neck and nipping at my ears. 

“Yes, it is,” he insisted, shifting beside me. “If I’d known you my whole life then none of this would have happened.”

“What are you--”

“If I’d known you before Hampden,” he cut me off, hand curling into a white fist. “Before Bunny, and before Henry, and Julian, and the twins, and… and…”

Piecing together every strand of courage I could muster, I looked at him. 

He appeared grey. Tired. But he was also flushed and pink, a dizzying mirror of youth. 

I said, “If you met me before Hampden, you’d have gotten rid of me sooner.”

He blinked hard. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I wasn’t a good person before Hampden,” I elucidated. “Or during, or after. Or now. I’ve never really been a good person.” 

“Neither have I,” he replied, locking my gaze with his own. “But that doesn’t matter. Who gets to decide what’s good and bad anyhow?” 

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. 

“Exactly,” he said. “One man’s trash is another’s treasure. Who knows? In another world, we could be the very pinnacle of good.”

“We’re murderers,” I pointed out. “Unconvicted murderers. That can’t be good in any world.”

He lapsed into silence.

Not knowing what else to do with myself, I reached over to the nightstand and flicked the lamp off. The room was swallowed by darkness; Francis said nothing.

We lay there for a long time, each thinking about what was or what could have been. I wasn’t akin to the idea of “what-if”s, but my mind couldn’t help itself from wandering. Traveling back in time, I could practically smell the sweet apple trees and rosemary bushes that lined the paths of Hampden; I could feel the thick, ivory-colored petals of snow getting caught in my eyelashes, and the smokey taste of sauteed fish mixed with scotch clawed at my tongue. But besides all that -- beyond the anesthetizing surface of those years -- I could feel the heaviness. The cold. 

Farmer, deer, rabbit. 

“Richard,” Francis’s voice floated through the darkness, my name light in his mouth. 

“Yeah?”

A beat. 

“Do I deserve you?”

I felt for his hand and found it lying clenched between the sheets. Gently, I took it. “Why do you ask that?”

“Because I want you.”

 _He’s drunk,_ I reminded myself. I said, “You deserve much better than me.”

“But I can want what I don’t deserve, can’t I?”

Suddenly, Francis seemed miles away. I held tighter to his fingers to ground myself; he was cool to the touch.

“I’m not going to stop you,” I said. 

It was an invitation, more or less. I couldn’t deny that. 

So when Francis’s hands delicately slid up my arms and wove themselves into my hair, I stayed true to my word. When he ducked his head into the bend of my neck and our ankles bumped together, I let him. And when his nose knocked against mine, lips parted in question, face so close in the still black night, I answered him. 

We kept it slow and languid, his lips gradually sliding to mine and his nails ghosting down my shoulders. He didn’t rush, and neither did I. We didn’t need to; we had all the time in the world. 

I eventually stopped him before we went too far, refusing to let myself take advantage or be advantaged in the absence of his sobriety. Nevertheless, he was content to stay wrapped around me afterward, rosy and breathing like a weightless bird. 

My skin buzzed in the places where he’d kissed me, and my mind buzzed with the thoughts of it happening again. 

“Francis?” I spoke just above his hair.

He made a small noise in response, the tender hands of unconsciousness tugging at him. 

“I wish I’d known you my whole life, too.”

But he was gone; out like a light.

I was scared of him once; hiding in stairwells to avoid running into him before Greek class and looking the other way when his billowing black coat caught my eye. But that moment, in the darkness, I knew one thing only: he was all I had left. 

And for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid. Not of him, me, Hampden. Nothing. 

Farmer, deer, rabbit.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> come hang out with me on [tumblr](https://dynazty.tumblr.com/) if you so desire. i promise i don't bite :) <3


End file.
